


Out of the Cold (the Slow Thaw Remix)

by sheafrotherdon



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: M/M, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-04-14
Updated: 2006-04-14
Packaged: 2017-10-11 23:23:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/118301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheafrotherdon/pseuds/sheafrotherdon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Draco had half a mind to curse Christmas, the economy, the printing press, literacy, compassion, Pansy, and her daughter to kingdom come.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out of the Cold (the Slow Thaw Remix)

Draco had half a mind to curse Christmas, the economy, the printing press, literacy, compassion, Pansy, and her daughter to kingdom come. Blasted bloody child and her appetite for Muggle books; he shifted _Caitlyn Kenmore_ from right hand to left, added Flourish and Blott's to the prospective list of Those Who Should Be Cursed, and steeled himself to hold Potter's gaze.

It was nine years since an Azkaban winter, and Potter had paused in Diagon Alley at his call. Draco was dimly aware of the Advent hoards that ranged about them - carollers singing at Gringotts' corner, chestnut vendors plying their wares - but it was Potter who had his attention, Potter whose anger vibrated at a pitch that Draco doubted anyone else could hear.

  
 _I used to wish you dead, you know._

I assure you the feeling was more than mutual.

Do you still?

Wish you dead?

Yeah.

No. Not for a long time.

He'd instigated this - been unwilling to watch Potter walk away from an unforeseen squabble over a pile of children's books, and he hadn't a clue what the hell he was doing. He eyed the novel that Potter carried, mirror to his own, meant for someone else's child, as was his.

  
 _I don't anymore either, you know._

Don't what?

Wish you dead.

Oh. Ah, that's good, I suppose.

If there was justice to be wrought from this awkward meeting, there ought to be vitriol between them, wands raised at twenty paces and their unfinished business burning like acid into the cobblestones beneath their feet. There were deaths to reckon and Draco knew the tally; Lucius, Bellatrix, Moody, and Tonks, first among equals on an endless list. But this wasn't war, and his fingers clasped the tale of a Muggle heroine, a garish children's book to remind him the world had changed and he barely knew his footing where Potter was concerned.

  
 _I was about to head over to the Leaky Cauldron to get out of the cold. Maybe you'd like to join me for a drink? Er, purely for the purpose of warming up, of course._

He watched and waited, remembering heat - the spitfire blaze of a hundred fights, the satisfaction of stoking Potter's rage. But temper was too simple an explanation for the scarlet texture of Potter's character and this was more; the pepper sting of bravado and uncertainty; the crimson maw of shifting guilt; attraction in a candle's flame.

  
 _Warm up to you, Potter?_ He paused, shifting slightly beneath the press of his memories. _I think . . ._

~*~

"Pansy?"

"Hmmmm?"

"Your child has her jam-encrusted fingers wound in my robes." Draco squinted at the three-year-old who'd set her chin atop his knee. She grinned at him happily.

"Dittany, be nice." Pansy sipped her tea and hitched an elegant shoulder. "Don't worry, your robes'll wash."

Draco blinked. "Wash?"

Pansy eyed him with pity. "You wore spell-clean robes to a house with a three-year old in it?"

"What else would I wear?" Draco shook his leg in the hopes of dislodging the giggling parasite bound to his limb.

"How about . . . " A peck at the window derailed the conversation. "If this is for you, I'm gutting you with a butter knife."

Draco rolled his eyes. "May as well; your child has already provided preserves." He winkled his nose as Dittany licked his robes. "You are not a _dog_ ," he hissed.

"For you. Of course." Pansy cast the letter in Draco's direction and offered the owl a handful of sunflower seeds.

The draft from the window was sharp with January's chill, and Draco shivered as he slid a finger beneath the seal. "It's from Mungo's," he offered, scanning the text, bitterness curling cold at his hip. He shook his head. "Severus."

"What about him?"

Draco re-folded the letter, running a nail over the folds, stunned enough not to care when Dittany scrambled into his lap. He let her burrow beneath his arm, lay her cheek against his chest, offering instinctive comfort. "He died," he said, looking up at Pansy, lost.

~*~

"Malfoy?"

Draco unfolded himself from the dark, damp corner of his cell. "Here." Hoarse. Always the same question, the same foolishness, as if it were possible for him to melt through the mortar of the frigid stones on which he slept and disappear.

"Stew." A bowl slid roughly beneath the door.

Potatoes bobbed in thin, grey broth. He licked his lips. "Is there news?"

"Your mother's dead."

He lifted the bowl to his mouth, forced himself to swallow grief, carrot and gristle, celery and bile. There would be no other food. "When?"

"Day afore last. Did it herself - knew we was on her." The guard scuffed a shoe. "Pretty neck from what I hear, and she snapped it with a scarf."

Draco glanced at the straw on the floor, a moulding blanket, a cup half-filled with water; she would never survived. "I see."

The guard scratched his elbow. "Don't understand your kind," he mumbled at last, clearly disquieted.

Draco arched an eyebrow. "Perhaps best you don't." He sipped again from the bowl.

~*~

"Where?"

"Bristol."

"When?"

"Thursday."

"How can he possibly expect . . . "

Draco laughed incredulously, a thin, brittle sound. "He's _mad_. Has that basic fact not yet penetrated your tiny fucking mind?"

Kingsley narrowed his eyes. "I meant logistically. The injuries you told us about, the things he did to Goyle. . . "

"He healed them."

"Healed . . . how'd he . . ."

" _Magic_ ," Draco drawled. "Imagine that."

"There's no spell can undo - "

"Dark Magic."

"Ah."

"Yes, _ah_. Were you in any particular program for the gifted, or are you an untutored genius, Shacklebolt?"

Kingsley slid his wand back into his sleeve. "For a spy you've a right fucking well of contempt for the people you're helping."

"I'm helping myself."

"That'd be right." Kingsley eyed him. "Why you doing it?"

"Fun," he snapped.

~*~

The dying sycamore barely offered shelter as he stood in the snow, eyes trained upon the crofter's cottage. The tree at his back groaned and withered beneath vampiric spells to siphon life, and the earth was scorched from the witless touch of an impatient hex. Against the sky curled slate-grey smoke, but no hearth had called the shadows into being. He curled his nails into his palm, anchored himself in growing disgust. This - this was the increase of grace they were winning, ambition realized in a landscape's death?

The shepherd they'd hunted cried out and fell silent.

"Wrong man, damned fool," snapped Lucius as they left.

~*~

The Muggle was drunk, he realized, wandering the hillside in the near-as-dammit dead of night without protective thought of banshees or ghouls.

". . . the eifth I am, enery the eifth iyam iyam . . . "

Draco's stomach pitched. Behind him ranged boulders, slammed into the earth by giants of another war. He could hear nothing, see nothing of his father's business, the glamours raised around the stones too professional to reveal the pitch and timbre of Moody's screams. But he knew what he protected.

"Bin married . . .oooof, um . . . sev'n times beforrrre . . ."

He had his orders.

". . . Annnnnn ever'one was an enery . . . enery! . . . She wouldn'ave a Willy or a . . hey - _hey_ , join in lad, join in . . . Saaaaam . . ."

Draco raised his wand.

"I'm her eifth . . . what's that you got then? . . ."

The killing curse tasted rank on his lips, exploding with a flash of stinging green light. He set his jaw as the sot fell to the ground, inebriated, culled, a middle-aged man with mud-splattered trousers and laces untied. Draco crouched beside the lifeless body, the first of his doing, and studied the pain on the dead man's face, the grey at his temples and the shaving cut at his jaw. He shivered, smoothed a thumb along the surface of his wand, and vomited neatly into the winter-sparse grass.

"Well done." Lucius squeezed his shoulder when he saw his work, and let him mutilate the body himself.

~*~

He refused to be manhandled like those who'd gone before him, dragged to their choice by the restively masked. He was no less afraid than Nott or Crabbe, but he set his jaw and entered the hall, balled his hands into fists to still their shaking.

Voldemort laughed softly, pleased by the display. "Quite the show, Mr Malfoy. And courage such a _Gryffindor_ quality." He extended a hand to touch Draco's face, smirked when the latter flinched and stilled. "Don't worry my boy." He dropped his hand, eyeing him thoughtfully. "You aren't brave. I understand."

Draco had expected the Mark to burn - for the magic to sink viciously into his skin and blister a claim upon his will. Cold had never occurred to him, and he twisted as seasoned hands gripped his shoulders, held out his forearm and let him choke on the black-ice curl of Voldemort's pleasure. Teeth gritted, he fought against the pain that bloomed in his bones, cold enough to kill a man where he stood. His breath turned to ice in the cradle of his lungs and he pulled and tugged, strove to get away, the dwindling flicker of his once fierce pride a feeble defence against the pleas on his tongue.

Draco threw back his head and screamed before the end. His blood ran thin as his arm bled black.

~*~

Waiting for an answer, Harry fiddled with his gloves, and Draco was reminded of a schoolboy he'd known, a rival who grew nervous before each Quidditch match.

  
 _Warm up to you Potter?_.

Snow was falling more quickly now, dusting the shoulders of Potter's cloak. Dusk was gathering, candles winking to life in the windows around them, and the wands in Ollivander's window began to spell out greetings in light - Happy Christmas, Joyeux Noel, Frliche Weihnachten, Buon Natale. The wind rose and fell with vicious precision, piercing the weave of Draco's cloak. But Draco had learned not to set store by cold. Warmth, on the other hand . . .

He smiled at Potter. _I think I just might_.


End file.
